Electrolyte Concentrations and Blood Gas Values in Neonatal Calves With Diarrhea

Abstract

Portable blood analyzers, which recently have been introduced to veterinary medicine, can facilitate immediate identification of sick calves in livestock farms. However, no appropriate standard values exist for neonatal calves; therefore, reference values for adult cattle guide diagnosis and treatment of newborn calves. Our goal was to determine electrolyte, blood chemistry, and blood gas values from healthy calves and compare them to those for diarrheic calves, thus providing useful information for diagnosis and prognosis. We evaluated 193 calves (£1 month old), including those with (n = 88) and without diarrhea (n = 105), using two-tailed, independent t tests after determining normality (Shapiro−Wilk test). Electrolyte measurements in the diarrheic calves included significant decreases in sodium and significant increases in potassium, chloride, and blood urea nitrogen. Strong ion difference (SID), pH, bicarbonate, partial pressure of carbon dioxide, and base excess (BE) were significantly lower in the diarrheic calves (p < 0.001); the anion gap (AG) was significantly higher among diarrheic calves aged 1-10 days (p < 0.001) compared to healthy calves. Our results demonstrate that SID, pH, bicarbonate, and BE correlated strongly with metabolic acidosis, suggesting that these indicators, including AG, can be important tools for evaluating calves’ health status and for providing useful information to diagnose diarrhea.

Reproductive Consequences of Electrolyte Disturbances in Domestic Animals

“…It was shown that in the case of dehydrated animals, that is, with a disturbed electrolyte balance, the heart rate increased and there were disturbances in the rhythm of this organ [ 86 ]. Such disturbances are often observed in calves with diarrhea [ 87 ]. Furthermore, there is an increase in the number of lymphocytes and eosinophilia, which may already indicate inflammation in the body [ 71 ].…”